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Languages of the Ottoman Empire | |
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![]() 1911 Ottoman calendar in Ottoman Turkish, Arabic, Greek, Armenian, Hebrew/Judeo-Spanish, French and Bulgarian | |
Official | Ottoman Turkish |
Recognised | Arabic,[1][2] Persian[1][2] |
Minority | Albanian, Armenian, Aromanian, Azerbaijani, Assyrian Neo-Aramaic (Suret), Western Neo-Aramaic, Berber (Tamazight), Bulgarian, Cappadocian Greek, all the Caucasian languages, Coptic, Chagatai Turkic, Crimean Tatar, Crimean Gothic, Croatian, Domari, Gagauz, Georgian, German, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Italian,Judeo-Arabic, Judeo-Aramaic, Judaeo-Spanish, Kurdish, Latin,[dn 1] Laz, Megleno-Romanian, Polish, Pontic Greek, Romanian, Russian, Ruthenian, Serbian, Slovak, Ukrainian, Urum, Yevanic, Zazaki, Bosnian |
Foreign | French |
The language of the court and government of the Ottoman Empire was Ottoman Turkish,[3] but many other languages were in contemporary use in parts of the empire. The Ottomans had three influential languages, known as "Alsina-i Thalātha" (The Three Languages), that were common to Ottoman readers: Ottoman Turkish, Arabic and Persian.[2] Turkish was spoken by the majority of the people in Anatolia and by the majority of Muslims of the Balkans except in Albania, Bosnia, and various Aegean Sea islands; Persian was initially a literary and high-court language used by the educated in the Ottoman Empire before being displaced by Ottoman Turkish;[1] and Arabic, which was the legal and religious language of the empire,[1] was also spoken regionally, mainly in Arabia, North Africa, Mesopotamia and the Levant.[4]
Although the minorities of the Ottoman Empire were free to use their language amongst themselves, if they needed to communicate with the government they had to use Ottoman Turkish.[5] Some ordinary people had to hire special "request-writers" (arzuhâlcis) to be able to communicate with the government.[6] In villages where two or more populations lived together, the inhabitants would often speak each other's languages. In cosmopolitan cities, people often spoke their family languages, and many non-ethnic Turks spoke Turkish as a second language.[citation needed] Educated Ottoman Turks spoke Arabic and Persian, as these were the main non-Turkish languages in the pre-Tanzimat era.[7][1]
Italian seems to have remained the best known European language among Turks for some time, and as late as the nineteenth century (B.Lewis “The muslim discovery of Europe”, III On language and translation). The original version of the Treaty of Küçük Kaynarca (1774) between the Ottoman and Russian empires was in Italian and was later translated in Russian and Turkish.
In the last two centuries, French and English emerged as popular languages, especially among the Christian Levantine communities. The elite learned French at school, and used European products as a fashion statement.[citation needed] The use of Ottoman Turkish for science and literature grew steadily under the Ottomans, while Persian declined in those functions. During this period, Ottoman Turkish gained many loanwords from Arabic and Persian.[4]
Linguistic groups were varied and overlapping. In the Balkan Peninsula, Slavic, Greek and Albanian speakers were the majority, but there were substantial communities of Turks and Romance-speaking Romanians, Aromanians and Megleno-Romanians. In most of Anatolia, Turkish was the majority language, but Greek and Armenian—and in the east and southeast, Kurdish and Aramaic—were also spoken. In Syria, Iraq, Arabia, Egypt and north Africa, most of the population spoke varieties of Arabic while elites spoke Turkish. However, in no province of the Empire was a single language spoken exclusively.[8]
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